Comic 950: Zombie Amelia Earhart

Title: Mystery Solved; alt-text: The Roanoke Lost Colonists founded Roanoke, the Franklin Expedition reached the Pacific in 2009 when the Northwest Passage opened, and Jimmy Hoffa currently heads the Teamsters Union--he just started going by 'James'.

Ugh. This comic makes me mad for a couple of reasons. First of all, the mystery of Amelia Earhart HAS been solved, and obviously not in the stupid way Randy is offering. Second, the first panel is entirely unnecessary. In fact, the execution as a whole is bad, but I'll get to that a little later on.

The third, and arguably the worst problem, is the "joke." Amelia, and Randall by proxy, is doing something called "trolling." You say something absolutely and unequivocally retarded, then make fun of your audience for being confused or trying to call you on it. It's like saying, "I've discovered the square root of walrus!" How the heck do you expect people to react? Would a "smarter" person be able to parse that out into any form of sense or logic at all? Anyway, the point is, Randall's trolling. This brings up a rather relevant question.

Why.

Why, Randall, did you feel the need to make this a comic? It's not funny. It's not accurate. It's not relevant. It doesn't have anything to do with romance, sarcasm, math, or language. You're being nonsensical for the sake of nonsensicality (stupid for the sake of stupid, if you will), and randomness by itself does NOT guarantee humor. Sometimes it does. Sometimes, as the same comic shows, it does not. Today it did not.

But, just for the sake of argument, let's say that this was an excellent punchline. You know, hypothetically. If such a thing were possible for Randall. It's still crippled by some of the worst execution outside of walls of text. Why is all the conversation off-screen? Why do we need to be told in such a clunky manner what the plane is or who its pilot is? How would Earhart, now age 114, even be recognizable? Why do we need to be told, word by painful word, every step leading up to the joke?

Look. I'm no cartoonist; I've said that time and time again. Still, I'm going to try my hand at making an actual revision when I get home from work (6PM CST). In the meantime, take a look at this easy, EASY edit to vastly improve the comic.


Look at that and tell me it's not WAY better than the original.


P.S. It's worth noting that this is not the first time that Randall has dug up a dead woman in his strip. Seems like kind of a weird obsession.

P.P.S As promised, here is my edit of the comic.


And before you say, "Randall's looks better," remember that I don't do this for a living. I have a real job.